Hey all - I made my own coconut extract by soaking almost a pound of toasted, shredded, unsweetened coconut in 750 ml of vodka for two weeks. I strained off the coconut, boiled off the vodka, and am now trying to figure out how much to add to my porter, in secondary. It’s around a 5 gallon batch. My instinct is that if I’ve added 3/4 lb of toasted coconut that wasn’t soaked in vodka to another beer and it was a good amount, I can’t ruin a beer by merely adding the same amount of coconut that WAS soaked in vodka. Thoughts?
Don’t add it in secondary…add it to taste at packaging. That way there’s no guessing.
Sounds like a great idea. Any tips on avoiding oxidation when mixing extract, corn sugar and beer? I usually add the corn sugar “solution” to the bottling bucket, then add my beer on top. I’ve never added anything at bottling other than corn sugar and water. I don’t like to stir it a lot.
I can’t imagine any more oxidation occurring with your extract beyond that of the priming sugar addition. Both should have the oxygen boiled off for the most part, so the oxidation would come from the open mixing. Bottle conditioning uses some oxygen so you should be OK. Also, I do agree with Denny that adding to taste at packaging time is the only way to be sure the amount gives you what you want.
You can add it when you add your corn sugar solution. Here’s what I do…pour 4 2 oz. samples of the beer before you rack to your bottling bucket. Dose each with a different, measured amount of your extract. Determine which you like best and scale that amount of extract up to your batch size. Then you can add before racking.
Cool! Thanks 